Elkka DJ Kicks interview – “A wonderful challenge, but definitely a challenge at times”
Live act, DJ of distinction, and now DJ Kicks curator, is there anything Elkka can’t do?
Elkka – or Emma Kirby if you prefer her real name – is looking remarkably chipper this morning. Chatting to us in a small room in her London base that she shares with a few books and a few more bits of electronic equipment, you’d never know that 24 hours previously she was in the dentist’s chair.
“I’ve got impacted wisdom teeth going on,” she tells us, seemingly recovered at least for now, “which are going to have to be dealt with at some point, but it’s fine for now. I’m trying to put it off for as long as possible.”
Ouch, indeed. Luckily, Kirby has a lot to distract her from such agonies at the moment. Given her smiley disposition at the relatively early – in DJ terms at least – time of 11am, she’s enjoying every moment of her snowballing career as a DJ and live act. Check her Boiler Room session from 2022, recorded almost a year ago in Edinburgh, for proof of the scenes of carnage and euphoric celebration she’s capable of whipping up from behind the decks. Similarly, see her always growing list of live shows at the bottom of this article and realise she’s equally in demand in that form.
It’s a career that’s just been cemented by the arrival of a DJ Kicks mix, a comprehensive 24-track romp through great house and techno from all over the globe, from US talent like Dan Curtin and Shake to Mark Pritchard’s ‘Give It Your Choir’, Mark Broom’s ‘Silenced, part 2’ and Jensen Interceptor featuring Assembler Code’s ‘Lean Before The Interview’. Quite an honour, we’d have say – and Elkka agrees.
“The first step was trying to not be too overwhelmed by the prospect of doing it,” she admits, “because it’s iconic and an honour to be asked. It’s something I’d always gone to and loved myself, a formative part of my musical education.”
Namechecking her favourites among the now legendary mix series, of which her session is a staggering number 79, the Motor City Drum Ensemble, John Talabot, Special Request and Jayda G all come to mind quickly. Big footprints to tread in, certainly. So how did she approach it?
“Your head goes to a different place based on what you’ve heard before and where I wanted it to sit. It’s very different prospect to putting together something like an essential mix, I had to get myself into a different headspace. It was a broader search than normal. As well as music that you might not have heard from me in a mix before, I wanted music that could sit very comfortably in your living room, bedroom, getting your dinner ready – something you could just put on. Something to accompany your home life as well as your dance life.”
As well as that, where a normal mix is designed for a specific moment in time – a certain evening in a club or festival, or a radio show – because of its worldwide reputation and the fact it’s pressed onto CD and an exclusive-packed unmixed double vinyl album too, the DJ Kicks series will represent you for several years to come at the very least.
“You can’t help but feel like that,” Elkka says, “a wonderful challenge but definitely a challenge at times. I wanted something that, even in 10 years’ time, would feel true to how I am. There are limitations to what you can put on, as well, you know, this is a record, compared a mix where you can just put anything on. But with limitation comes creativity.”
She didn’t do too badly at all, we reckon, despite taking on a role that’s as much A&R chief as DJ. Some tracks, Omri Smadar’s ‘Adama’, almost literally fell into her lap. “About six months ago I was in a pub and it came on, I loved it, Shazam-ed it, and played it out.” Others, like ‘Bad Girls’ by Surusinghe, were tracks that had been go to spins from her recent sets, obvious choices for a mix that sums up where her head is at right now. It was important to her to include female voices and members of the LGBTQ+ community, too, she states.
Others took a bit more work. She created two exclusives, one (‘Body’) with Juno Daily favourite Jeigo (who also contributes a track of his own to the mix) and one alone, titled ‘Hands’, that stamp her own production flavour on proceedings. Among the others secured is a new exclusive track from experimental house genius and sometime big band leader Herbert.
“He’s someone I’ve adored forever, so to have an original track from him in there is such a weird thing. It sounds like Timbaland or something,” she laughs. “When I got it I messaged him (grinning) saying ‘what is this?!’ He’s incredible, he’s a genius. It’s like a downtempo, moody, but it sounds like a Brittney Spears or Timbaland sample, and I used to love that music when I was younger, so I loved it. It’s really unusual – I played it out a few times and it really catches people’s attention.”
There was a bit of Ableton action in the final stages, but most of the mixing was done “organically” at home. “I tried to not to be too overly focussed on perfect blends,” she admits, “I wanted it to feel good first and foremast, that was the most important thing.”
Of course, DJing is just one side of Elkka’s offering. After growing up in her native Cardiff on the pure pop music of Dido, Brittney, Timberlake and Timbaland and r&b, encountering the esoteric songwriting of Imogen Heap was a serious eye opener for here, “a big bridge between pop and electronic music”, which led in turn to trip hop – Zero 7, (“I obsessively listened to that” and SIA. Songwriting and production were passions that came before DJing. Dropping out of a business degree in Bath to concentrate on she came to London she studied songwriting at the Point Blank school under Steve Hillier from 90s stars Dubstar, who was sufficiently convinced of her talent that he kept in touch and suggested potential collaborators. That still didn’t bring the quite the right results, but after hooking up with her wife-to-be, Alex, getting out and partying to house music became a bigger and bigger part of her life.
“It all really clicked when I started making music myself,” she recalls, “I had to find out what music I wanted to make, that music – dance music, house music – and make it myself.”
DJing served as an education for the production work. “You have to keep feeding it, keep searching out new music to play and it’s highly addictive, right?!”
A live show developed naturally out of the studio adventures, and a stint on the road with Caribou gave her a chance to hone it. Rather like the songwriting and production, it felt right to approach it alone rather than draft in helpers, so surrounded by synths, drum machines and lots of programmable, mapable Midi gear, not to mention taking on vocal duties too, it’s very much a solo affair.
“It’s important for me to start that way because that’s what got me to where I am now. I think it’s quite impactful to see a woman there doing it on her own, because there was nothing like that when I started ten years ago.” With work progressing on her solo album proper too – “I can’t say much about it now, but it’s really wonderful and exciting, it’s all coming together” – and a frighteningly chocca schedule of shows lined up for the summer, one this is for sure. Elkka is going places – in every sense of the word.
Ben Willmott
Buy Elkka’s DJ Kicks on vinyl or CD here
Live dates:
19 May – The Grand Social, Dublin, IE
20 May Gonzo’s Two Room, Norwich
3 June – One Summer Day
18 June – Acces The Festival, Midlands
26 June – Hideout, Croatia
8 July – Bass Coast, Merritt BC
13 July – VIVA!, Milan
14 July – Beat Herder, Lancashire UK
21 July – Junction 2, UK B2B Sofia Kourtesis
22 July – Bluedot Festival, Macclesfield
23 July – Secret Garden Party, UK
30 July – Into the Woods Hereford, UK
18 Aug – Lowlands Festival, NL – LIVE
2 Sept – End of the Road, Wilts UK
6 Sept – ION Festival, Albania